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Defiant MLAs force Patiala admn to cancel Preneet meet
Fearing more ‘fireworks’ days after the Congress MLAs from chief minister’s home turf upped the ante against their own government, the district administration cancelled
Fearing more ‘fireworks’ days after the Congress MLAs from chief minister’s home turf upped the ante against their own government, the district administration cancelled the district development coordination and monitoring committee meeting at the eleventh hour on Saturday. Wife of chief minister and local MP Preneet Kaur was to preside over the meeting. Preneet is the chairperson of committee and all MLAs from the district are members.
The move came after rebel MLAs Nirmal Singh Shutrana, Hardial Kamboj, Rajinder Singh and Madan Lal Jalalpur on Saturday morning boycotted a function of Patiala Municipal Corporation, where Preneet was the chief guest. At the function, Preneet faced a tough time explaining why the chairs meant for the MLAs on the stage were unoccupied.
Fearing that rebel MLAs will either boycott the afternoon meeting or create an unsavoury situation by raking up issues against the government or speak up against the officials as they did in the grievances committee meeting last month, the administration decided to put off the meeting. The agenda of the Saturday’s meeting was released on November 26 and it was sent to all the MLAs and officers in Patiala.
In the grievances committee meeting ob November 19, minister Sadhu Singh Dharamsot was stunned when the ruling party MLAs raised question on the functioning of their own government and accused officials of corruption.
On Friday, the MLAs held a presser and alleged that OSDs of CM are more powerful than the legislators and were infringing into the domain of the elected representatives. They said that though action has been taken against some officials indulging in illegal practices, but many issues are still unresolved.
Since municipal council presidents, zila parishad chairpersons and block samiti chairpersons happen to be the members of district development coordination and monitoring committee, the district administration was fearing a boycott as they are considered close to the MLAs concerned.
Deputy commissioner Kumar Amit, however, said the meeting was cancelled as majority of SDMs and other officials of district administration were assigned additional duties for the Investment Punjab summit. “When majority of officials are out of stations and were part of the organising team of the investment summit, it was impossible to conduct the meeting. Most of the officials got intimation about their additional duty on Friday, thus we had to cancel the meeting at the last moment,” he said.
